Animals have accents

It’s true, you know: animals do have accents. A few years ago, linguists proved that cows have regional accents, and they’re not the only ones. I’ve done my own research. French animals sound different to Australian animals, as proved by my French friends who gave me the low-down on the sounds that animals make. Here goes:

Bruno the cat in the grass
Bruno, my cat: does he ronron or purr?
Rooster: cock-a-doodle-doo
Chicken: cluck cluck
Frog: ribbit
Turkey: gobble gobble
Cat purring: purr purr
Cow: moo
Le coq: cocorico
La poule: cotcotcodec
La grenouille: croa croa
La dinde: glou glou
Le chat: ronron
La vache: meuh
Okay, that last one isn’t all that different, but it felt wrong not to include cows given they clomp around in the fields around me all day long. I can understand some of these differences, like the rooster and the frog. In fact, they’re probably closer to the sound those animals make. But what’s going on with the turkey? And how on earth does a cat purring sound like ‘ronron’?
About

I'm a technical author, journalist and writer from Australia who has been living in Europe since 2000 and exploring the world from there. My passions are writing, snow sports and travel.

6 Comments on “Animals have accents

  1. I think Bruno purrs for you, but I bet he ronrons for the other girls he meets there. 🙂

  2. I don’t want to be harsh, but if you are writing the words down, would it not be a benefit for you and perhaps others to move away from phonetic spelling and use the correct grammatical form ?

    Le coq ( la coque = hull of a ship)
    La grenouille
    la vache

  3. David, thanks for pointing out my terrible spelling in French. I’m normally a bit more careful, although this entry was a bit of a rush to get done before I left for my late summer holiday. Business (and spelling) as usual now that the excitement of Corsica is out of the way.